Economist Reveals What $4k Gold, $38T Debt & AI Bubbles Means For America | Bryce Gill | Ep. 70

Summary

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The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show

Episode 70: Economist Reveals What $4k Gold, $38T Debt & AI Bubbles Means For America
Guest: Bryce Gill
Date: October 27, 2025

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Brief Overview

This episode dives deep into major economic questions facing the United States in 2025: the unprecedented $38 trillion national debt, the implications of $4,000 gold prices, the true impact of tariffs, and whether the current artificial intelligence (AI) market is a bubble. Economist Bryce Gill joins host David Rutherford (with contributions from co-host Jordy) to analyze America's economic resilience, generational wealth transfers, and the effects of technological change—combining grounded data with accessible, sometimes wry, commentary.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. America’s $38 Trillion Debt: How Worried Should We Be?

(Starts 04:04)

• Bryce Gill emphasizes that while $38T is an “impossible” number to fully comprehend, the key concern is the annual interest expense: “Today, interest is like a trillion dollars a year in the United States... it’s at like the highest level as a percent of GDP or the budget or any of these things. So that it’s been in modern history and it’s set to go higher from there.” (04:41)
• The U.S. remains protected by the dollar’s role as global reserve currency. Bryce notes, “50% of global transactions are in the dollar. The next highest is like the euro at 20... So there’s nobody even nipping at our heels here.” (04:41)
• The real long-term issue is demographic: entitlement spending for aging baby boomers (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security) which make up about 65-70% of federal spending.
  • “Ultimately, Dave, it fixes itself. These people will eventually pass away. It won’t be such a top-heavy economy. But until then, we kind of got to carry this weight.” (07:40)

2. Who Holds the U.S. Debt and Who Gets the Interest?

(07:50)

• Only around 15% of U.S. debt is held by foreigners now; about 30% is held by the Social Security trust fund. The rest is mostly wealthy, older domestic investors.
• “The vast majority of the US Debt is frankly held by, like, wealthy older people. Right. So it’s not just that we pay them Social Security and we pay for their health care. Like this trillion dollars in national interest payments we’re making, that’s going to baby boomers mostly as well.” (08:13)
• Bryce’s concern: Too much focus on supporting the wealthiest, oldest demographic at the expense of younger generations.

3. The Role and Impact of Tariffs

(16:02)

• Tariffs aren’t recession-makers because only about 5% of U.S. consumer spending is affected.
  • “It’s really hard for me to see how like 5% of consumer spending gets us to a recession.” (16:51)
  • They function more like a “progressive tax” on wealthier, less price-sensitive consumers.
• Tariffs incentivize foreign and domestic companies to invest in U.S. manufacturing.
  • “The actual projects that have broken ground... looks like about one and a half trillion dollars spending has begun. It’s not all going to happen this year from the tariffs.” (19:02)
  • Companies like Ford and Stellantis are reshoring production.
• The expectation: short-term choppiness, long-term gains through capex, job creation, and domestically circulating wages.

4. Generational Change & The Coming Wealth Transfer

(22:42)

• Massive generational wealth transfer—estimates range between $30T and $70T—is underway as baby boomers retire or pass away.
  • “Statistically speaking, today, people 65 and over, retired people, for the first time ever in U.S. History are the largest consumer demographic... Baby boomers spend more money. They’re 22% of consumer spending.” (23:57, 24:41)
• Many family businesses pass to private equity, not heirs, leading to market concentration and potentially lower service quality—a trend that “might be a bubble eventually.” (25:10)
  • “Private equity. One guy in New York can’t run every barbershop in the continental United States. It just doesn’t work that way.” (25:10)

5. Public Markets, Asset Price Highs & the AI Bubble

(27:40)

• Stock market highs are driven mainly by a handful of big tech/AI names.
  • Echoes of 2001: “It’s this narrative around AI changing the world... This just looks really frothy to me and kind of worrisome to be honest.” (27:40)
• AI companies’ financials are often circular, with companies investing in and buying from each other to inflate growth numbers.
  • “They’re all like lending each other money and buying each other’s products.” (27:40)
• Housing market: U.S. homes are now an international asset class, with demand driven by global, not just domestic, investors—exacerbating affordability for younger Americans.

6. AI: Miracle or Mirage?

(35:05, Deep Dive at 36:42)

• Is AI a bubble? Bryce is “skeptically optimistic.”
  • AI is, for now, reducing white-collar jobs more than creating them.
  • “The reality of AI today is that it automates white collar jobs away.” (36:42)
  • Much of the sector’s growth/earnings are based on circular financing among tech giants: “It’s kind of like circular financing. This is stuff that worries me.” (38:54)
  • Real productivity gains will depend on whether AI tools are widely distributed and increase overall wages—not just enrich a few companies.

7. Gold Hits $4,000—What Does It Mean?

(45:38)

• Gold’s record high is tied to falling institutional trust and global diversification away from the dollar.
  • “Gold typically does well when institutional trust is falling... I think part of this is just lack of institutional trust.” (46:22)
  • U.S. reserve currency status may decline from 50% of transactions to 40%—other currencies and “neutral reserve assets” like gold pick up the slack.
  • Gold is a “neutral” asset that’s less vulnerable to sanctions than dollar reserves.
  • Central banks are printing again and interest rates are coming down—also positive for gold.

8. The “Debasement Trade”: Are Fixed Assets the Only Safe Bet?

(49:50-54:01)

• With high debt and the risk/ease of printing money, the “debasement trade”—betting on assets like gold, bitcoin, and real estate that hold value as the dollar weakens—makes sense.
• “I think the whole history of the world says that the government takes the easy way on [and] prints money.” (51:14)
  • Printing (“debasement”) is “the easy way out.”
  • Inflation is “the secret tax”: “It’s actually the money that they spend that taxes all of us because it dilutes our purchasing power. And yeah, inflation is the easiest way for them to tax your wealth away.” (52:42, 54:01)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the U.S. Dollar’s Resilience:
  “The reality is we’re the biggest empire in world history, right?... There’s really no better alternative.” – Bryce Gill (04:41)

• On Interest Payments Feeding the Boomer Economy:
  “A lot of the budget is just devoted towards the older generation... That’s fine, if that’s the priority... but any nation that’s focused on... the oldest generation, not on the youngest... has a shelf life.” – Bryce Gill (09:16)

• On Tariffs’ True Impact:
  “We’re leveraging our consumer market... You want access to these rich consumers to sell to, well, there’s going to be, you know, a couple of loopholes you have to jump through.” – Bryce Gill (16:51)

• On Generational Wealth Transfer and PE’s Invasion of Main Street:
  “Private equity. One guy in New York can’t run every barbershop in the continental United States. It just doesn’t work that way.” – Bryce Gill (25:10)

• On Artificial Intelligence Mania:
  “It’s kind of like circular financing. This is stuff that worries me... I just hear people yelling, ‘fifth Industrial Revolution, it’s changing the world, shut up, you’re a Luddite.’... I’m skeptically optimistic. But I don’t really see this delivering any kind of value to society yet.” – Bryce Gill (38:54, 41:53)

• On Gold as Safe Haven:
  “Gold is a natural... neutral reserve asset... It’s always been a reserve currency since the beginning of time, and it’s not going away.” – Bryce Gill (46:22)

• On Currency Debasement & Real Taxation:
  “Inflation is the easiest way for them to tax your wealth away... It’s really spending, that’s the tax. And you’ll notice spending never goes ever. Right. Maybe the deficit fluctuates a little bit. Maybe we add a little bit less debt. Spending goes up every single year. So I mean, that’s the real tax on all of us.” – Bryce Gill (52:42, 54:01)

• On the Cyclical Nature of Economic Policy:
  “We’ve been debasing currency for forever. It’s the easy way out.” – Bryce Gill (52:42)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• $38T Debt, Dollar Hegemony, and Interest (04:04–07:50)
• Who Holds the Debt (07:50–10:00)
• Tariffs & Re-shoring Jobs (16:02–19:19)
• Generational Wealth Transfer, Private Equity, Service Quality (22:42–27:40)
• Market Highs & Asset Price Inflation (27:40–31:58)
• AI Bubble and Labor Market Impacts (35:05–41:53)
• Gold at $4,000 & Reserve Currencies (45:38–49:50)
• Debasement Trade, Inflation as Tax (49:50–54:01)
• Bryce’s Gun Club Hobby—Personal Note (54:59–57:56)

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Tone & Style

The discussion is open and sharp, packed with illustrative statistics and historical context. Bryce Gill mixes technical expertise with plainspoken warnings and humorous asides—making the content digestible for finance buffs and laypeople alike. Host David Rutherford and co-host Jordy interject practical anecdotes and questions relevant to middle-class Americans.

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For Listeners in a Hurry

Big takeaway:
America’s economic dominance persists for now, but it comes at the cost of an aging demographic, the risk of currency debasement, and asset bubbles—particularly in technology and housing. Gold’s rally and AI mania reflect deeper forces of mistrust and technological hype, while tariffs are proving more effective at reshoring jobs than many feared. The real threat isn’t a sudden crash—it’s the slow erosion of purchasing power and opportunity for the next generation.

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Transcript

[Bryce Gill]

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[David Rutherford]

What happens when the United States hits 38 trillion in debt? We call our main man Bryce Gill today on the David Rutherford Show. All right, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, I again, I keep getting a lot of the requests. So and with what happened yesterday online in the absolute hysteria that just ripped through X at every single level of hitting 38 trillion, putting on a trillion dollars in debt every month now the Democrats want to add 3 trillion to the deficit. The Republicans want to add 2 trillion. There's all kinds of chaos. Meanwhile the markets are going through the roof. Gold's at an all time high. I'll tell you what, I'm too much of a knuckle dragon meathead to figure this out. So based on your request, we reached out to the man, the myth, the legend, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, Mr. Bryce Gill. Bryce, how you doing, buddy?

[Bryce Gill]

I'm doing great, man. It's great to be with you again. And yeah, lots to talk about, obviously.

[David Rutherford]

All right, let's just start at the main issue that just pulls everybody's attention away from investing, long term ideas, the whole thing. And that's the nature of hitting $38 trillion. What are you and your team thinking about? I know your main economist that you work with, you know, been very vocal about that as of late and that we're not addressing those issues. What are your thoughts on what that number means, what it means short term, long term, and what do you think the how the markets are going to react?

[Bryce Gill]

Yeah, it's, you know, it's so hard to really say because obviously the size of that number is crazy. It's impossible to really fathom actually what that means. And so, you know, there are economists, years ago, Reinhart and Rogoff, this is after 2008, 2009, they did a study, they looked at governments all over the world, looked at all of the history of government debt and basically came to the conclusion that when an economy hits about 100% debt to GDP ratio, which we're past that now, right. That's when empirically it starts to slow down your economy, cause problems, right. Put you at risk of a debt crisis. And so, hey, we're past that point, the one thing that is kind of the fly in the ointment here, the thing that makes it really difficult to analyze this, is that the United States is not a normal economy, right? The reality is we're the biggest empire in world history, right? And so the dollar is the reserve currency, by the way. It's by far the dominant reserve currency in the world. I just looked at today, 50% of global transactions are in the dollar. The next highest is like the euro at 20, right? So we're two and a half times the euro. So there's nobody even nipping at our heels here. And so it makes it hard, right, because it's like, hey, we're past the point where normally would cause problems, but everybody's sort of cemented into this dollar system. There's really no better alternative. I mean, you look all around the world, Europe is worse shape than us. China has a ton of problems. Nobody wants to own the yen. That economy's been stagnant for 30 years. And so people are kind of just stuck with the dollar. Now, that all being said, really the problem here is not like the overall level of debt. What kind of worries me more is the interest payments we're making every year on it, right? So today, interest is like a trillion dollars a year in the United States, it's at like the highest level as a percent of GDP or the budget or any of these things. So that it's been in modern history and it's set to go higher from there. And so we're just throwing money in the hole of interest. And unless something's kind of done about that, it just continues to weigh down current growth. It causes problems because when I pay interest, I'm not getting anything for my money. I'm basically paying back the money I already borrowed. So it worries me. I think there's maybe a couple bright spots around, hey, we're reducing government employment. The tariffs are bringing in a lot of money. I'm sure we'll talk about that a little bit. But big picture, this is all about the baby boomers. It's all about Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. That's 70, 65, 70% of the money we spend at the federal level is on those programs. And so ultimately, Dave, it fixes itself. These people will eventually pass away. It won't be such a top heavy economy. But until then, we kind of got to carry this weight of entitlements in the United States. And thankfully, everybody's sort of stuck with us and keeps lending us that money.

[David Rutherford]

Awesome. Thank you for that explanation. One of the things that I think when. When people hear about the interest payment, where does that interest payment go? Who, what organization, entity, what bank, what. What system is taking that $1 trillion from America? And I think a lot of people don't understand how that works either.

[Bryce Gill]

Yeah. So it used to be like a lot of that money would go abroad, right. The Chinese owned the debt or the Japanese owned the debt, and they still do. Like, don't get me wrong. So we'd actually pay interest and it go abroad to some foreign investor. Right. Today, foreign investors are a much smaller portion of the overall debt. About 30% of it's held by the Social Security trust fund. So when we pay it, it just goes into Social Security. I want to say 15% of it's held by foreigners, roughly, and then the rest of it. So, like, the biggest chunk is held by investors. Right. And it's held by all kinds of investors. But generally speaking, like, as you age, you get older, you sort of shift away from equities and towards fixed income. And so the vast majority of the US Debt is frankly held by, like, wealthy older people. Right. So it's not just. It's not just that we pay them Social Security and we pay for their health care. Like this trillion dollars in the national interest payments we're making, that's going to baby boomers mostly as well.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Right.

[Bryce Gill]

So a lot of the budget is just devoted towards the older generation in the United States, and that's fine. Like, if that's the priority we want to have as a country, I guess where I kind of get a little bit concerned with that is like any nation that's focused on, you know, the oldest generation, not on the youngest generation or the next generation coming up, you know, it has a shelf life. Right. Like, I think we should be focused more on young families that want to be having children or schools or whatever, infrastructure, whatever else, instead of just making sure the oldest and, like, empirically speaking, wealthiest demographic in the country has even more support.

[David Rutherford]

That's brilliant. I couldn't agree with you more. And I think you're starting to see a cultural shift towards that. Right. And the narratives that are playing out and what younger people are being more outspoken about, whether it's the inability to, you know, pay for their insurance premiums or it's an inability to find great jobs or an inability to, you know, get their own home loans, you know, to be able to start that nuclear family and start that long term, what is it, commitment to the system, if you will.

[Emily Maitlis]

Right.

[David Rutherford]

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[David Rutherford]

A deep dive into the stories making.

[Bryce Gill]

The news headlines across the world.

[Emily Maitlis]

The News Agents we're not just here to tell you what's happening, but why? From me, Emily Maitlis and me, John Sopel with Global's award winning podcast the Newsagents Dropping Daily, covering everything you need to know about politics and current affairs.

[David Rutherford]

And the newsagents USA listening to the.

[Emily Maitlis]

Newsagents on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Open your free iHeart app and search the newsagents to start listening.

[Ryan Reynolds]

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[David Rutherford]

We just had an update about what you thought how tariffs were doing. Can you just touch on that right now, are we as a country, have we see all these headlines about, you know, we have multiple trillions of dollars, 3 trillion of investments that have come, you know, strangely, from Middle Eastern countries that, you know, seem to have to want to play some new role in the development, redevelopment of Gaza or what other just markets that they can get access to. Now we see a lot of that. So, you know, where are the tariffs? Your opinion, how are they impacting the country as a whole, and how are they impacting the average investor?

[Bryce Gill]

Yeah, so generally speaking, listen, I've always said I don't think tariffs can have a big enough effect to cause a recession. And that's because 70% of consumer spend in the United States is what we call services. So it's me and you talking on this. It's going out to eat, it's getting a haircut. It's things that are provided by Americans to other Americans locally. And domestically, it's not touched by tariffs. The other 30% is goods. Only a third of those goods are imported goods. So we're talking 10% of consumer spending on the United States is on imports of any kind. And then about 50% of that trade is exempt from tariffs because of, like, USMCA or whatever else. So, like, a nice round number to give you, Dave, is that 5% of consumer spending in the United States is subject to tariffs. Okay. And we care about consumer spending because the biggest chunk of gdp. So it's really hard for me to see how like 5% of consumer spending gets us to a recession. And, you know, when we really think about it, who buys imported goods? Okay. It's not people that are price sensitive. Factually speaking, wealthier individuals buy more imports. And so this is basically a progressive tax that hits wealthier individuals that are less price sensitive is kind of the bottom line here. And so I'm not really concerned about it causing a recession. We can talk about the slowdown in the jobs reports and kind of what I think is going on there if you'd like to. Yeah, but generally speaking, okay, what we're doing is we're leveraging our consumer market, which we are the biggest, most dominant consumer market in the world. You need us as customers. I think we're 40% of global consumption. And we're saying if you want access to these rich consumers to sell to, well, there's going to be, you know, a couple of loopholes you have to jump through. You want to sell, you know, pharmaceutical drugs to the United States consumer base, well, guess what? You need to build A factory here. You want to, you know, sell your semiconductors to United States companies, you're going to have to build a factory here. Right. And so you mentioned, I think like a $3 trillion number. I've heard up to $6 trillion.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Wow.

[Bryce Gill]

A lot of it's PR frankly, right? From what I can tell, kind of the best number I've seen is that the actual projects that have broken ground. And again, it's going to take years for all the spending to happen. Right. But it looks like about one and a half trillion dollars.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Wow.

[Bryce Gill]

Spending has begun. It's not all going to happen this year from the tariffs. Okay. Or at least like adjacent to the tariffs. So think pharmaceutical facilities, think semiconductor manufacturing plants. There's a whole host of things too, right? Auto plants. And like I think Ford is talking about gearing up production here. Stellantis, the company that famously ruined Jeep as a brand. Right. They're moving a bunch of production back to America. The list is very long. So I think it's, it's just factually true that yes, tariffs do cause companies to on the margin, change their behavior because they need us as consumers over here. And so when you really hear like a lot of the analysis around tariffs, it's like, hey, it's going to hurt consumer spending. Right. And again, I sort of like highlighted why I think that impact, whatever it's going to be, is pretty small. And by the way, we haven't really seen any evidence that it's happened yet. But the sort of hope would be yes, the consumer spending portion of gdp, maybe that slows down a little bit short term, but then all this capex happens, that sort of offsets it, right? All the investment in factories and plants and equipment and then those higher Americans, Americans are paid well in these new, well equipped factories and then that keeps all the spending domestically in the United States. So I think ultimately this is going to be a positive for the United States. I know it's chaotic right now and global supply chains are shifting back here after 80 years of going abroad. And so there's going to be some bumps in the road. But it looks to me like yes, the tariffs are working and having an effect so far.

[David Rutherford]

That's great to hear because that was the big concern we talked about last time was this reshoring of jobs, right? Bringing able to take this middle class that was offshore and dissipated and now bring it back to give. Like you said, you know, a person that doesn't have to have. And we were just joking. Not joking, but Jordy and I Were talking about student loan debt and you know, for jobs that really don't, you know, they don't exist.

[Jordy]

Right.

[David Rutherford]

It's not a service based job if you, you know, have a liberal arts degree and you know, an African basket weaving. So, you know, the idea is as these companies onshore, it becomes a more productive G for those young people that are looking for those better opportunities at that American dream. Now, one of the things that I constantly hear about on the road is this idea of as those boomers time out, there's gonna be this massive transfer of wealth, what, as low as 30 trillion, as high as 70. Someone said to me yesterday at an event in Houston. And, and that's a massive number. What do you. Based on where the market is right now, which is at an all time high. And can you give us a little description of why that is? And then what you think is going to happen as a result of the shift in that wealth, Will it stay in the right places or. I know Jordy's got a couple questions for you here in a second about gold and bitcoin and how like you said, what is the future of the next generation gonna look like from.

[Jordy]

From.

[David Rutherford]

Spending and then also from saving, you know, how is that all going to look like in your mind? That was a lot.

[Bryce Gill]

Yeah, well, we think about how it's like happening, right? Is basically, it used to be like we just did the jobs that our, our parents did, right? So if my dad is a, you know, a baker, I'm going to be a baker. If my dad makes, you know, the barrels, right? That's what the last name Cooper comes from. I'm a Cooper, right. I do, I make the barrels up till like, you know, current day, it's. I'm a veterinarian because my dad was a veterinarian or my dad had a, you know, an orthodontic practice. So then I went to school to be an orthodontist. What's kind of happened recently, and I think social media is a big part of this, I think there's a whole host of things happening is that basically nobody wants to continue on the family business anymore. Right. Statistically, a small amount of people do. And so you have these older people that are retiring, they want to pass on their kids, but their kids aren't really interested. And so instead what they do is they go and sell it to a private equity firm firm. And this is happening in basically every industry. Dave, like I talked to my barber recently. Hey, my barber went independent and now he's just Working out of it, like his own little studio or whatever that he rents. But he's like, yeah, that barber shop I was working out of, they got bought by private equity. Right? So everybody was buying barber shops now.

[David Rutherford]

Oh, my God.

[Bryce Gill]

And basically, you know, it's. It's good right now in the sense that it makes the economy a little bit more resilient because, hey, that. That baby boomer that retired just got paid a bunch of money. Right? And by the way, Dave, like I talked about the baby boomers a little bit earlier. Statistically Speaking, today, people 65 and over, retired people, for the first time ever in US History are the largest consumer demographic. They spend more money than anybody else. Historically, that was. We always talk about, like, the. The 35 to 54 was the key economic demographic. People are buying houses, starting families, sending their kids to colle, buying washing machines, buying cars. Today, it's baby boomers.

[David Rutherford]

Wow.

[Bryce Gill]

Baby boomers spend more money. They're 22% of consumer spending. Retired baby boomers, I should specify 65 and over. So they're getting paid out by private equity. Private equity is rolling all these small businesses up into bigger umbrellas, right? That's why service is going down in, like, everything. You're paying more, and the quality is lower, it seems like. Right. So private equity is buying all this stuff. I worry down the line, like, this ends up being a bubble, Right?

[David Rutherford]

Right.

[Bryce Gill]

Private equity. One guy in New York can't run every barbershop in the continental United States. It just doesn't work that way. And so the bad news, right, is like, hey, in short term, it makes all these small businesses kind of more service for the money that you spend. I think ultimately there might be, like, a financial bubble in some of these private markets eventually. Now, most of us don't really invest in private markets. We don't have the ability to that. But ultimately, it creates a ton of opportunity for entrepreneurs that basically can come in and like, hey, your barber shop is terrible. Now I'm going to create a new model that's better and I'll steal all the business. Right? So it used to be, hey, you just pass on the family business, and your kid, like, ran it into the ground. Today, at least you're getting paid out by Wall Street, I guess, and they're selling it to some investor, and maybe he'll lose his shirt and then. And hopefully the next generation. And I think there are a ton of Gen Z people and younger millennials that are, like, willing to pick up the reins and be the entrepreneurs here. But it's sort of a different way to transfer wealth than ever before. Right. Because institutionally like Wall Street's very involved.

[David Rutherford]

That's the fascinating aspect to me is you would like they traditionally what Wall street provided the service of this long term approach to investment, the slow growth on your portfol, you just keep now, they're now proactive and they're, they're, they're getting into like you said, every industry, whether it's the housing market, which I just, you know, watched the long video this morning about you know, this person's theory about how blackrock is through shell companies buying houses right. At, at, at an elevated price and then coming in, elevating the market for that area and then there be. And so the people that are selling their house at the highest price get out and they can't afford to go into another house so they end up renting the house they just sold. Right. And it's this twist. So there's a lot of that that's in play with I think these various markets. And what the P and E firms are gobbling up is that having an impact on the market itself. Is that why we're seeing all time highs now or what? What's your theory behind why the market is so healthy?

[Bryce Gill]

Yeah, I mean I wouldn't say necessarily the market's that healthy. Right. At least we're talking about like the public stock market, the s and P500 for example. Okay. You know, if you look at like valuations. So just compare like the multiple or like the price of a stock to the earnings that it's, it's actually earning. Things are very expensive. And the other problem is that there's like seven stocks that have driven everything for years. And so it's really like AI that's kind of driven a lot of this. Right. It's this narrative around AI changing the world. And I ultimately think it will do that. But this just looks really frothy to me and kind of worrisome to be honest. And when you read about how these companies are all, it's like a giant self reinforcing loop. They're all like lending each other money and buying each other's products. So like, like, you know, Nvidia will go out and invest in Core Weave, right? They give them money, they get Core Weave stock, then Core Weave takes that money and buys Nvidia chips, right. And so yeah, like Nvidia's sales go up 25% but it's their own money that basically did it. And now if anything doesn't work out. They're all tied together as like one big thing, right? So it, it seems a lot like 2001 to me, to be honest. I understand the companies have earnings, but, but their earnings aren't coming from AI. It's like Microsoft's able to pay for AI because they have web services, they have legacy software sales and things like this. So it's the AI sector that just looks really kind of worrisome to me. The other thing I'd point out is you mentioned the houses. I talked about pe, okay? What you're basically seeing here is like the end game of financializing an economy, okay? Which is what happens when you're the global reserve currency. And so part of the reason why I feel we need to sort of like pare back globalization a little bit, focus a little bit more on national development is because when we run a trade deficit, which today is about a trillion dollars, right? The old school idea, if you open the Wall Street Journal or read the Cato Institute or something, what they're going to tell you is, hey, it's great. We give them dollars that we print and they give us stuff they worked really hard for to make, right? But that fundamentally misunderstands what's happening because we're not just giving them dollars, right? They take those dollars and they buy things with the dollars. They buy assets, right? We're not trading them dollars for goods, we're trading them ownership of national assets for goods, okay? And so the dollars go abroad. Then the Chinese, the Saudis, whoever take those dollars, they buy, they buy, you know, BlackRock buys all these single family homes and rolls them up into a fund. Who are they selling that to? I don't buy BlackRock single family home funds, right? The Saudi royal family does. Who's investing in the PE firm that's buying all the barber shops? It's probably a bunch of like foreign investors that want access to the US consumer market, right? So I think part of this is the trade deficit and I feel for young people, man, because is, you know, there's a whole. We could talk about housing and supply and demand and everything else, okay? The part that's never talked about is like US housing supply, especially in places like big cities, which you can buy a cheap house in America, right? Go 45 out rural, you know, you can get $100,000 house, no problem, okay? Housing is expensive in the places with the jobs in the big cities. That's where people invest money, right? So you're competing with the entire world because US homes are an international asset class. Nobody's buying Argentinian homes, right? No one's buying homes in Malawi. US Housing is an international asset class. That's why it's so expensive. It's one of the reasons why. It's why all our assets are so expensive. It's the trade deficit that does that. And that's why, hey, Donald Trump throws a bunch of tariffs on. People get worried about this trading system. Oh, no, is the trade deficit going to decline because that structurally lowers demand for U.S. assets. Not that it won't be valuable anymore, but. But all the foreign money doesn't just pour in in a bigger and bigger amount every year.

[David Rutherford]

Got it. Got it. Okay, I. I know Jordy's got some questions for you, Bryce, but before he does, man, I just am so fired up about this new sponsor of ours. It's one of the few institutions in the country that I truly believe cares about their. Their students and really wants to educate them in the most substantial way by using the very best commodity that they have, which is, you know, in time, is without a doubt our most precious commodity. And I've. I've heard from so many of my listeners who have asked for my advice about how they can spend it wisely to improve themselves and the people around them, because every single time it's. Hey, have you done the research? Have you gotten educated? Well, I'm telling you what. Hillsdale College is offering More than 40. You heard me, 40 free online courses. That's right. More than 40 free f r E E online courses. You can learn about the works of C.S. lewis, one of my personal favorites. Man, I just. I can't get enough of the guy. You can learn about stories of the book of Genesis, the meaning of the US Constitution, the rise and fall of the Roman Republic, or the history of the ancient Christian church with Hillsdale's college online courses, all available for free. You heard me when I said this. It's free. Don't wait, waste your time.

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[David Rutherford]

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[Jordy]

All right, great. Yeah, I could ask you a million questions, but I'll just start with a few. Just one quick comment on the housing thing. My wife and I were, we're renting right now. We looked at a couple suburbs around the Raleigh area in North Carolina and media. Median, median home price in a lot of these places is $670,000. And I'm like, holy cow, that's pretty crazy. That's the median. Anyway, I think a good place to start is following up with what something you said about the AI stuff. A lot of people are wondering, are we in some kind of bubble right now? And he did touch on it. One, do you think we're in a bubble? But then two, I've heard an argument that you might think is legit or might think is crazy. That debt, are we overvalued and it's a bubble, or are the companies just getting better? Because if you look at the revenue generated from some of these AI companies, if you look at the revenue per employee, for example, for some of these top companies, it's way higher than historically they've ever been. So maybe this isn't a bubble. Maybe they're just, you know, legitimately earning and deserving a higher PE ratio. But what do you think about that?

[David Rutherford]

Yeah, I just saw. Let me hop in real quick. Sorry, Bryce. I just saw that. A statement that said Mark Zuckerberg is paying AI experts $280,000 opening salaries to come over in his organization. Now, I'm hoping that's just because there's so few people that have that expertise that it's that high and he's just pulling from all the other top AI companies. But for me, that, that was like, well, that's a pretty positive thing. How do you become an AI expert? So I just wanted to acknowledge that.

[Bryce Gill]

Yeah, I think that's a great question. How do you become an AI expert? Because, you know, there's no training formally in AI. I mean, and by the way, Mark Zuckerberg just laid off like 600 people out of the AI division, right? So if they're hiring, they're firing people constantly. They're always competing for labor with each other. But generally speaking, I think the AI thing is good for the economy long term if this is widely distributed technology. And that's kind of where I get more skeptical of it, okay? If theoretically AI helps automate a bunch of processes, it's not just one guy at the top that owns a highly automated production system with no employees that collects all the revenue. If we all get AI tools that make us more productive and all of our pay goes up in kind of a broad way, then AI is good. It boosts productivity, it boosts economic growth and increases real wages. Like, there's really no downside to that necessarily. The concern would be like, hey, all the AI stuff that I'm seeing right now, like the reality of AI today is that it automates white collar jobs away pay, right? That's why you invested as a company. It's not that, hey, my HR manager can do five times as much work, right? It's that I can do the same amount of HR with 5 times less managers or whatever, right? And so like, I saw a stat the other day and this is sort of my barometer for like white collar labor. Like, how's the job market doing? But that's who's been getting fired because of AI for years, right? This is like coders and paralegals and things like that. Your plumber's fine. He's not even affected by AI at all. Is you look at the number of people taking the lsat, okay? Because hey, if, if you want, you know, you're getting out of college, you just got this credential, the job market doesn't look very good. You know, maybe I'll just go to law school, right? Get another credential, I'll take on some debt. But like, hopefully things are figured out by then. It's kind of how people treat law school in the United States. A year ago this month, like 6,000 people took the LSAT. Okay? This month, this year, year, 40,000 people took the LSAT. So it went up over 5x, right?

[David Rutherford]

Wow.

[Bryce Gill]

That tells me that AI is not creating a bunch of new jobs or broadening the tools that people have, right. It's allowing companies to lay off white collar employees, right? So I'm skeptical of AI like creating this economic miracle right now. I think what it does is just concentrate creates wealth. It's great for like some companies, right, that, that pull it off. But broadly speaking, it just means less white collar people earning a salary probably at least right now as far as the market goes with AI, yes. Like these companies are seeing their revenue grow quickly. A lot of them have a ton of earnings. Like again, I don't think Microsoft's going to go bankrupt here, right? I don't think Facebook's going to go bankrupt. They're money printing machines. Like, no question about it. The problem is, okay, all that revenue is again coming from these like circular dealer financing situations where they're all tying each other together. They're all like in this incestuous relationship. And when you look at the assumptions that are going into this, right, like OpenAI, for example, okay, open AI lost like $15 billion or something this year. But they're saying, hey, we're going to. But down the road we're a growth stock. We start just making a ton of cash. Okay, well they just took on all this capex, like $60 billion in capex with Oracle. Next year they're expected to lose $27 billion. The year after that they're expected to lose $45 billion. So where's the cash going to come from from OpenAI to buy all this stuff from Oracle? It's going to come from Oracle buying more OpenAI stock, right? They're going to pay for themselves to, to like sell this, this product. And so guys, it's kind of like circular financing. This is stuff that worries me, right? Because when you hope for is like, hey, oh my God, all these consumers are signing up for chat GPT premium and we're just raking in the cash. Like that's not really what's happening here. 95 of these AI companies have, you know, no profit, right? So and the ones that do make profit, it's from other businesses. So. So I'm not saying this technology never works out again. I think it will. But I think we're kind of in this period where there's this massive amount of capex happening under very optimistic assumptions. And all I see from AI on a daily basis is like video slop, right? I think we all see this stuff showing up. This is why your power bill's going up. This is why, you know, we've got, you know, less water available in the aquifers or whatever. So, you know, they need $2 trillion of revenue by 2040 or 2030. I apologize. So five years from now, under the most optimistic assumptions, according to like Bain and cap, Bain and company, they're short by 800 billion. Okay. And then on top of that, like half the power generation. They need to actually like gear up.

[Jordy]

Up.

[Bryce Gill]

There's no way it comes online under any circumstance, right? It takes a while to build a nuclear power plant or like a coal plant or anything. So I'm having trouble like squaring the circle here. I just hear people yelling like fifth Industrial Revolution. It's changing the world. Shut up. You're a Luddite and I'm not. I'm like skeptically optimistic. But I don't really see this delivering any kind of value to society yet. I think it's just more kind of video garbage on all of our feeds.

[David Rutherford]

And that's. And that's why what, Jordy is so high?

[Jordy]

Oh yeah, exactly. A lot of things are real high right now. I got two more questions for you if you'll just indulge me. I don't get to talk to an economist very often.

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[Jordy]

Learn [e-mail] Gold hit $4,000. That was a big deal in the news. I personally bought one ounce of gold in 2020. So I'm rich now, which is awesome. That has typically historically been a signal of defensiveness like or something's kind of going on or there's chaos in the market, uncertainty in um. But maybe it's something else. We also saw bitcoin there. It's, it's doing well, hitting all time highs, having little drawbacks here and there, but that's nothing for bitcoin. Why do you think gold hit that all time high? Why is it having such a just remarkable year and is it, can it keep going to 5,000 or does this spell some kind of a looming disaster?

[Bryce Gill]

Oh yeah, I think it's, it's done really well for a couple of reasons. Okay. One is yeah, gold typically does well when institutional trust is falling. Right? Because like the dollar is worth a lot when we all trust in the idea of the dollar, Right. So, and like, listen, we all know there's not a lot of trust in institutions for good reason. Right? And I think people are more and more concerned about the US's ability to manage all of this, frankly. Like Donald Trump attacking the independence of the Federal Reserve. Right. Like, like, it's. Maybe you think it's great that Donald Trump is going to be in charge, but the point is, then a Democrat's going to be in charge, right? So it's better to have like, a disinterested technocrat like Jerome Powell in control of the Federal Reserve, because politicians always want to print more money, they always want to lower interest rates, and that can cause problems. So I think part of this is just lack of institutional trust. I think it's a tax on the Federal Reserve's independence that have driven up gold. Okay. The other thing that I think is happening here is internationally, countries are diversifying their reserve assets. And Bitcoin is also a reserve asset sort of. Right. We, we kind of think of it the same way as gold. So let me, like, put it this way, okay. I, I mentioned like, 50% global market share for the dollar, right? It's insanely dominant. The trade off to that is the financialization of the US economy that I mentioned, which is also at this point, unsust. We're taking all these measures like tariffs and reshoring and protectionism and whatever else to try and reverse that trend a little bit. And so I expect the dollar as a reserve currency to fall in relative status. I don't think it's going away as a reserve currency. Nobody else can replace it. But instead of 50% of global transactions, maybe the dollar falls to 40%, the dollar weakens a little bit. What picks up the slack? There's there probably the euro a little bit, probably other fiat currencies, but gold is a natural. It's always been a reserve currency. It's been a reserve currency since the beginning of time, and it's not going away. And what's nice about gold is that it's what we call a neutral reserve asset. So one of the reasons people are upset about the dollar, it's not. There's the trade tension. There's us actually trying to reduce the trade deficit and all of that. That part of it too, is just people see us using sanctions as a weapon. Right? It's great that you take dollars and you invest in us. Gold doesn't pay you an interest rate. The problem is, though, if you hold a bunch of treasury bonds, the United States government might Just confiscate all of it like we did to Russia. Okay. Or they might just sanction you into the ground if we don't like what you do politically. And so countries see this and say, hey, 50% of our forex reserves, that's too much in dollars. Right? There's just the world's cha. The United States is swinging around sanctions like crazy. Maybe we need to pare that back a little bit and buy a bunch of gold instead. Right. It's because there's no quid pro quo quo with gold. So I think it's the combination of those things that's driven up gold prices. And yeah, there's kind of a tailwind to gold going forward. By the way, all the central banks are printing money again, right? They've lowered interest rates. Gold goes up in that situation as well. So I think there's kind of a confluence of factors that are positive for gold rates now.

[Jordy]

All right, I got one more question for you. There's some talk that I've heard around the investor, Wall street world, something called the debasement trade. And I think this kind of relates to what we're talking about gold. We're talking about the $38 trillion in debt. Many people, when they look at the debt, they say, okay, well the US has one of three options. They can either how do you, you know, how do you pay it back? How do you get right again? Well, you could default on, on it. That's not going to happen because then you get World War iii. You could try to out produce. You produce your way out of it, meaning just our GDP just explodes from something. Maybe it's from AI, maybe it's from some clean energy revolution, I'm not sure. And we get our GDP up enough to not make it a big deal. And then the last option, which seems like it's kind of going this way, is we're just going to debase the currency until that debt's not very. A very big deal. This is leading people into saying, hey, something like, like gold, something like Bitcoin, other these, these kind of fixed assets. Maybe we just put our money in that do the debasement trade. Because it sounds like the government, the Federal Reserve, they're going in one direction and they're going to send fixed assets to the moon because they're not going to start printing. Do you think there's anything to that sort of debasement trade idea, investing in fixed assets? And is that kind of the path you see going forward for the government? Just, hey, we're just going to kind of slowly debase the dollar to try to stabilize the situation.

[Bryce Gill]

Yeah. I point out, right, like, what's the other major fixed asset that everybody owns is housing, right? So, like real estate. So, yeah, I listen. I think the whole history of the world says that the government takes the easy way on Prince money, right? So right now, guys, like, to be honest, things are going fine. There's not really a huge con. Like, I don't think we're going to default on the debt. I don't think the debt's going to cause a death spiral in the United States. I think we'll.

[Ryan Reynolds]

We're.

[Bryce Gill]

We're fine right now. Okay, but what happens if there's another giant pandemic? What happens if there's a giant war? What happens if, you know, the attack on infrastructure? What happens if, you know, Go down the list, Right.

[Jordy]

Jerome, load up the printer.

[Bryce Gill]

Yeah. So what happens is historically, okay, there's the. The public facing dual mandate, which is, you know, stabilized inflation, keep inflation low and maximize unemployment. That's the PR Dual mandate. The real dual mandate is bail out banks during financial crises and make the government debt affordable. The reality here is if there's an existential problem that comes up, the Federal Reserve is going to print money. They're going to bail out the US Government. And so, yeah, I think the history of the world says they're going to print more money. Inflation's still 3%. They're already cutting.

[Jacob Goldstein]

Right.

[Bryce Gill]

They've given up the 2% target here. So, yeah, I would be concerned about currency debasement. But it's also been happening since the creation of the Federal Reserve. Right. There's nothing new about. It's been happening since the Roman government would debase the coins with cheaper metals. It would happen when people were clipping the coins to make them slightly smaller. So we've been debasing currency for forever. It's the easy way out. The last thing I'll say on this, okay, is that. And this comes from Milton Friedman, and there's things I disagree with on Milton. With Milton Friedman on. But I think this is such a key point, which is that when we talk about tax and we talk about government spending, like really, the actual tax is the spending itself. Okay. It's the spending that's the tax. As soon as you print the money and spend it, basically one of three things has to happen. One is you actually just pay for it by taxing out of the population. Okay. Two, you borrow money which just loads the tax on the future generations or Three, you know, you just debase the currency. Inflation is the secret tax, right? So it's actually the money that they spend that taxes all of us because it, it dilutes our purchasing power. And yeah, inflation is the easiest way for them to tax your wealth away. So I think it's a kind of a key point. We talk a lot about like deficits and debt and everything else. It's really spending, that's the tax. And you'll notice spending never goes ever. Right. Maybe the deficit fluctuates a little bit. Maybe we add a little bit less debt. Spending goes up every single year. So I mean, that's the real tax on all of us.

[David Rutherford]

Well, I'll tell you what, Bryce, every time you come on, not only do I have my mind blown, but I think all of our audience does. Jordy, your questions were phenomenal. Thank you so much. I've been chomping at the bit to get you going with Bryce. There's there Bryce. Before we go, I think everybody just wants to know, you know, what, what gun build out are you working on right now? Are you, are you, you know, what are you doing in terms of your training? What, what do you got going with, with that aspect of your life?

[Bryce Gill]

Yeah, so, you know, I've been doing a lot of pistol shooting this year. I just haven't really made it to do any like rifle classes. And I have an outdoor shooting range like an hour away in Sediment in Texas. So it's just, it's a little bit hard to get out and shoot the rifle. Put the plate carrier on sometimes. But I have a gun club and I'm a member of like the private upstairs range. And what's nice about that is like when I go there, there's usually nobody there, right. So I can go in front of the lanes, I can set up some targets and I can like actually shoot up there, which is great. And like not just a static way. So pistols have been kind of a, a natural transition with that. So been doing a lot of concealed carry draws and everything else. But, but the thing that's kind of been really fun this year, one of my pet projects, one is I have a Smith and Wesson TRR8. So if anybody knows what this is, it's the SWAT revolver. Okay. Basically Smith and Wesson designed this for the SWAT entry team. Guy with the shield. Because like semi automatic handguns and close retention could like malfunction on a shield, right? So eight rounds of.357 Magnum. Magnum. I've got an optic on that thing. Man, 357 Magnum is. Is serious business, right? That is a. That's a cool cartridge. So adaptable. So I've been shooting the double action.357 magnum revolver a lot more. I think that's just such an awesome gun. I also have a 1911 that I decided to get back into. I sent it out to get the slide milled. They ruined the slide, right? So that I had this gun for like 13 years. The slide is complete junk now, so I had to go and buy another slide, get it blended to the frame. I sent it out to get milled for an acro. They're DLC in it for me, so I should get that back next week and I'll have a functional 1911 again. So it's kind of been like a retro year, you know, modernized retro with the double action Revolver and the 1911.

[David Rutherford]

11, but modernized retro, that is. Bryce. Guilty right there, dude. I absolutely love it, man. I. I tell you what. I know there is a massive audience out there that is waiting, just waiting for the Vat Daddy Fats T Fat Stats substack blog where you do a blog on a finance and then a blog on firearms. Just, you know, just go back and forth on that. And I think you throw in a little prepper stuff and, and then know some international finance and dude, you've got. You've got 300,000 subscribers in like, like a year plus. That's it. That's my. That's my prediction.

[Bryce Gill]

Oh, I appreciate that. I hope I have. I have the free time to, like, pursue something like that. And at some point in the near future. I just got married. You know, there's probably some kids on the way at some point. Right. I'm very busy in my job as economist right now, so down the road, I'd love to pursue something like that.

[David Rutherford]

That's awesome.

[Jordy]

We'll just get you back on then, you know, it's all good.

[David Rutherford]

That's right. That's right. You'll be. You' your blog entries with us, man. Bryce Gill, ladies and gentlemen. Bryce, thank you so much. It's always just a real pleasure and a treat to have you on. Thank you.

[Bryce Gill]

Absolutely. Guys, always, always good to see you. Happy to do it anytime and have a great weekend.

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